Made it to Colombia!

Day 15 & 16 (268 Km)

      Monday was our day to explore Quito as a tourist and left the bikes untouched @ the hotel and took city buses to the "Mitad del Mundo" to get the photo, that we have been at 0.00 latitude on the equator in Ecuador. The place was a complete tourist trap, but that was expected  and left soon after the photo shoot and went back to the old historical part of Quito, what was quite interesting and had there a local 3 course lunch for $ 2.25 and that was including a drink as well!


                                         
    
     After visiting the Basilica and the small 
streets in the old town, we took a taxi to the "teleferico" that would bring us 4100 meters above sea level, so about 1300 meters above Quito! The view was great, but it began to rain and soon after that we returned to the hotel.





  Later that evening we had Chinese food in a real Chinese restaurants full of Chinese tourists , so the food must have been good, all these Chinese eating there!

               

                                           
     Tuesday, we left for Colombia and were making a side trip to the biggest arts and crafts market of South America, named Otavalo, about 100 km north of Quito. The place had some narrow busy streets  and after having spend an hour there, we took of for the border another 2 hours away through some nice valleys with a winding road running between 1500 meter and 3300 meters. Some where half way there was some construction and delayed us an hour or so and finally around 4 pm we reached the Ecuadorean side and had a little delay because there was no electricity, but an half an hour later, we checked ou and crossed the bridge to the Colombian side.

   It took me an hour or so to do all the unnecessary paperwork, changed some Us money into pesos and left the border to the first small city of Ipiales, about 5 km away and checked into a cheap hotel downtown around 6 pm, had a few beers and pizza and called it the night!